Impulse indeed & and against all odds!
1 March 2013
It’s finally settled: The Impulse Theater Biennale 2013 will take place! At the end of the year, it looked like the festival would have to be canceled for financial reasons. But in February 2013 the Stadtsparkasse KölnBonn made public funds available to Impulse in the amount of 100,000 Euro. With this commitment and a 50,000 Euro contribution from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the total budget for the 2013 festival is around 750,000 – still significantly lower than the total budget of the last festival in 2011.
So, only four months before the festival begins, the Impulse Theater Biennale has been rescued, at least for this time. From June 27 to July 7, the festival will show outstanding independent productions from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in Bochum, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Mülheim an der Ruhr. But some things had to be cut back, above all in the area of new productions from the more than 300 submissions to the open call. Our ability to realize these new concepts will not nearly have the breadth and depth that we had hoped for.
For this reason, we are already thinking about 2015. The importance of Impulse as a forum and lobby for the independent scene can be seen not only in the broad support, but also in the great response to the first open call in the festival’s more than twenty-year history. In order for Impulse to appropriately address this central role for independent theater, it is necessary that all participating and hopefully future partners see the barely rescued festival of Impulse 2013 as a chance and a challenge to insure the lasting financial future of the festival.
The program will be announced on May 6.
